“But we just telephoned and no one was home,” I reasoned, “and we really do need to get back in case Harriet’s relatives have arrived early.”
“And how, pray tell, am I to explain to them that she is missing?” Daddy’s glower burned most of the skin off the side of my face.”
To get him off the subject if only for a moment, I said, “It is awkward, but, let’s talk about Mr. Jarrow. Do you still think you’ve seen him before?”
“Alas,” he cried, his eyes lifting to the roof of the car, “I have not been in any mood to dwell on the matter,”
“Well, I have ... at least thought about it. I remember your mentioning, when talking about one of your outings with Harriet, that there was a man at another table reading a newspaper or a book with a mustache too big for his face. Couldn’t that have been Mr. Jarrow?”
“My feeling was that I noticed him at the airport.”
“Which one? In Germany or this end?”
“Both. I recall seeing people in flashes, their faces seeming to zoom into close-up range, because in the midst of my agony I marveled that others were going about the business of travel as if God was still in his heaven and all was right with the world.”
“Ned said Mr. Jarrow had been in Colchester looking after his old mother,” I reminded him.
“Giselle, I am in no mood to rack my brains on the subject of Mr. Jarrow. Until Harriet is restored to me, I shall remain in the depths of despair. I implore you to take me to the vicarage.”
“You’re right,” I said contritely. “It is what we should do. And if no one’s there, we can try the church hall and hopefully find Kathleen Ambleforth holding a rehearsal. It’s just a day or two until opening night, so she’s probably working her cast around the clock.”
I was, of course, really praying we would find my car conspicuously parked in front of St. Anselm’s with the keys still in the ignition. That way we could steal it back without having to snitch on the vicar to his wife, who must too often find herself at the end of her rope where he was concerned. No such luck! And I was about to find out that there are women in this world with incredible blind spots when it comes to their men. After knocking to no avail on the vicarage door, Daddy and I tracked enough textbook-perfect footprints across the gleaming church-hall floor to have delighted Scotland Yard. As on my last visit, Kathleen didn’t appear to notice a presence looming to her rear. Again her eyes were riveted to the stage. This time her niece Ruth, a tall, gangly young woman, was in the process of strangling Freddy.
“Absolutely splendid,” Kathleen heralded them. “We’re finally seeing the tender passion that binds Clarabelle and Reginald together despite Malicia’s cold-blooded attempts to tear them apart. Now let’s take the kiss again very slowly. And this time, Freddy, don’t pull away until Inspector Allbright taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘If it’s all right with you, sir, I’ll take a closer look to see why there’s an arm hanging out of that chest under the window.’ “
By now my cousin’s face was purple, but Daddy saved him from lapsing into unconsciousness with a loud “Ahem!” which swung Kathleen around to face us.
“Oh, how nice!” Kathleen didn’t look or sound tremendously enthusiastic. But then, we were interrupting her directorial flow. Besides which, Daddy’s spouting off at her in a wildly lovelorn state last night was probably still fresh in her mind. Still, she made an effort. “Every little bit of audience prepares the actors for looking out and seeing every seat in the house filled on opening night. Helps them shake off the collywobbles. Do sit wherever you like,” she said, waving her script at the rows of folding chairs.
“We’d love to stay and watch,” I fibbed, “but that’s not the reason we’re here.”
“Something most appalling has occurred ... ,” Daddy began.
“Oh, dear!” Her eyes had shifted back to the stage. “Clarabelle, perhaps you should hug Reg around the shoulders instead of his throat. But remember, Freddy, I want you to keep that dreamy-eyed expression.”
“The thing is,” I plowed on, “Mr. Ambleforth went off in my car.”
“And he’s taken Harriet.” Daddy’s furious vibrations sent autumn leaves eddying across the floor.
“That isn’t right!” Kathleen had finally given us her full attention, or so I thought until I realized she was addressing the gnome-like man with a large magnifying glass hovering on tiptoe behind the footlights as if afraid of inadvertently stomping on Freddy, who had finally collapsed, gasping on the floor.
“Inspector Allbright, you aren’t skipping through a meadow with a butterfly net. You have come on official business, devastated by your suspicions that your old friend Major Wagewar has met an untimely death in this house but deeply conflicted because Reg and Clarabelle have always been generous contributors to the Policemen’s Widows and Orphans Benefit. One wrong step in this investigation and you may find yourself sitting up at night knitting blankets and hot-water-bottle covers for the annual fund-raiser. Now, let me see the furrowed brow, the intently clenched jaw, the intelligent yet deferential gaze; there’s a dear man.”
Poor thing! He looked as though he wouldn’t mind abandoning his acting career to empty ashtrays and mop up beer spills down at the Dark Horse pub. I knew Tom Tingle from the Hearthside Guild and other local activities, and his diminutive stature and big ears tended to bring out my protective instincts. At any other time I would probably have rushed up onstage, tucked him under my arm, and spirited him off to his house, where he could have got into bed with a hot-water bottle. But Daddy was breathing down my neck like a cyclone. So I tracked after Kathleen and as kindly as possible explained about the Old Abbey, Ned, and the car and hinted that I would rather like to have it back. Sooner, if possible, rather than later.
“Immediately!” stormed Daddy.
“Yes, of course you would! It really is too shockingly bad of Dunstan. And I wish I could assure you that he’s an expert driver. But the truth of the matter is that when he’s all caught up in St. Ethelwort, he’s an absolute menace on the road.” Kathleen shook her head. “Still, let’s look on the bright side. Maybe he’ll run out of petrol. That sometimes brings him round. Especially if it’s close to teatime. The poor lamb is so desperately fond of my cheese scones.”
“There’s only one place for the perpetrator of such a horrible crime, and that’s at the end of a rope.” I thought it was Daddy speaking, but it was Tom in his role as the inspector. “You’re not leaving the scene of the crime,” he admonished Reg, otherwise known as Freddy, who plaintively responded that he’d really like to go home to his mum.
“When was she written into the script?” Clarabelle wanted to know.
“I’m talking about my real-life mother.” Freddy got up off the floor and dusted himself off. “She’s coming to visit, and I need to be home when she arrives.”
“Can’t you stay just another fifteen minutes?” Kathleen urged him. “It’s already next to impossible having a rehearsal without Lady Grizwolde. Such a pity she couldn’t come today. Although this could have been the chance for Roxie Malloy to understudy. Had I been able to get hold of her.” Heaving sigh. “And then there’s always the problem of having to work around the maid’s scenes until Dawn gets off school. Temperamental actors!” She rolled up the script and thumped it against a chair.
Afraid I might be the next buffeting block, I tiptoed over to her, asked her to phone as soon as she heard from Mr. Ambleforth, and on receipt of her nod marched Daddy, resisting, all the way out of the church hall. A voice from the rear implored us not to go. Actually, it was Clarabelle in a last-ditch scene with Reg begging him not to abandon their marriage vows to scamper off into Malicia Stillwaters’s lethal embrace.
“We’ve done everything humanly possible,” I told Daddy as we climbed into the Honda Prelude. To which he responded with stony silence. In fact, he didn’t say a word for the remainder of the short drive. We were within a few yards of Merlin’s Court when I saw another car turning in through the
gates ahead of us. It was a vehicle I didn’t recognize, and I assumed that here again were Harriet’s relatives. But suddenly a frothy blond head popped out of the window, and I was looking at Freddy’s mother. Aunt Lulu. Far from looking crestfallen at having been dispatched to us by an irate husband fed up with her kleptomania, she had the sunny smile of a schoolgirl intent on causing as much mischief as possible.
Chapter 14
From photos I had seen of her as a child, Aunt Lulu had been a very pretty little girl, and at fifty-something she still looked like Shirley Temple. Which isn’t to say that on a good day she didn’t show her age. When in the company of her husband, Maurice, not even her dimples or wide eyes could perk up her bewildered expression. But today, in the drawing room at Merlin’s Court, she had another man in tow, and she couldn’t have been bubblier as she tap-danced her way around the coffee table. “Ellie, dear, wasn’t it just lovely of nice Mr. Price to give me a lift here from the station? We were on the same train, although not in the same carriage.” This said in the virtuous, piping voice of one who knew how to comport herself even when away from Mummy’s eagle eye. “He heard me asking the ticket collector about the availability of taxis. I really couldn’t walk all the way to Merlin’s Court on these short legs. You know how I always tell my life history to everyone, Ellie, when Maurice isn’t there to say, ‘That’s enough, Lulu!’ But Mr. Price was so sweet. He very kindly said he would be delighted to take me in his car.”
“That was thoughtful,” I told the portly man in the pinstriped suit and round spectacles who, through no fault of his own, closely resembled the portentous Maurice.
“No trouble at all.” Even the voice was similar.
“Well, just a little.” Aunt Lulu giggled. Mr. Price couldn’t remember which car was his because it was a rented one, and he had to try lots of doors before finding one that opened. Luckily, that was one thing he did remember—leaving it unlocked. He had been worried about it all the time he’d been gone. And when he tried the key they had given him, it didn’t fit, and he had to use a tiny little screwdriver from one of those repair kits, the sort that you sometimes get in a Christmas cracker. I remember the year Freddy got one like it. He wanted the plastic ring that squirted water in people’s eyes, but Maurice wouldn’t swap with him.
“I shouldn’t have dealt with one of those economy-car places.” Mr. Price removed his specs and polished them with a handkerchief produced from his breast pocket. “As my dear wife often reminds me, we get what we pay for in this world.”
“You have a wife?” Aunt Lulu stopped tap-dancing.
“She’s an invalid; has been for many years.”
“Oh, how sad,” I said.
“Martha is the reason I went back up to London last night.” Mr. Price refolded his handkerchief and poked it back into his pocket. “I often have to cut short a business meeting to return home when she has one of her spells.”
“What business are you in?” It seemed a good time to be nosy.
“Toothbrushes.”
“What fun!” Aunt Lulu perched on the arm of a chair and spread her gathered skirts just a little above her plump knees. “I still have the pink one with the duck handle that I had when I was five. I keep it in a box in my bedroom with all my other childhood treasures. There is nothing like a toothbrush, is there, for bringing back memories.”
“I supply them to hotels for complimentary use.” Mr. Price paraded over to the windows, took a peek out of them, and returned to the central grouping of sofas and chairs. “And just recently I have begun offering the little travel kits.”
“Like the one he used in the car.” Aunt Lulu’s eyes grew big with admiration.
“Holidaymakers must find them very handy,” I said.
“That was Mary’s thought.”
“Mary?”
“My wife.”
“I thought you said her name was Martha?”
“So it is.” Mr. Price gave his spectacles another polish. “Mary is my pet name for her. You know how husbands and wives have these little games they play. All very silly, of course, and making no sense at all to outsiders.”
“That sounds so sweet.” Aunt Lulu sat on her armchair perch, swinging her short legs. “The only game Maurice plays is watching golf on television. And his pet name for me is Twit.”
“How about a drink, Mr. Price?” I suggested. “Or would you rather not as you have to drive?” He had been looking at me with diminished enthusiasm, causing me to reflect sadly that this had not been my day for keeping in people’s good graces. But he did smile now. A small, well-tailored sort of smile.
“Perhaps a very small one. Gin, if you have it.”
“Tonic water?”
“Just a splash.”
“And what about you?” I asked Aunt Lulu.
“Not just now, thank you, Ellie.”
“I’m not much of a bartender,” I apologized to Mr. Price. “My husband is better, but he’s taking Aunt Lulu’s suitcase down to her son’s cottage.”
“What about my handbag?” she asked a shade quickly.
“I expect Ben put it on the trestle table out in the hall.”
“Then I’d better go and get it,” she said with a breathless little-girl laugh. “I’m one of those silly women who can’t bear to be parted from her bag for long. Usually I don’t let it get away from me. But in all the excitement of seeing you and Ben again, Ellie, and even more thrillingly your father after all these years, I just put it down without thinking.”
Oh, Aunt Lulu! She was typical of a person who cheerfully helped herself to other people’s property and lived in fear of having the nose pinched off her face.
“I think I should get it,” she was telling Mr. Price as one of the latticed windows opened, a long leg descended over the sill, and a moment later the rest of Freddy entered the room. Upon spotting his mother, however, he appeared ready to beat a hasty retreat.
“No you don’t,” I told him.
“Hello, Mumsie.” He stood looking like every mother’s nightmare, with his ponytail and earring and his knees out of his jeans. “Had a good journey down? Pigged out in the buffet car on the train, I hope, because there’s not a thing to eat at the cottage. Where’s the pater?”
“He decided at the last moment not to bring me down. He said his secretary had complained that he had been taking too many days off lately. Apparently she burst into tears and said that life in the office was meaningless without him. And you know how he can’t bear to have a young girl sob in his arms.” There was not a trace of sarcasm in Aunt Lulu’s voice. “But Freddy, dear, you must let me introduce you to nice Mr. Price. He picked me up at the station. And we’ve been having such a fun time.”
“Hello.” My cousin eyed the portly man in the pinstriped suit without exuberance.
“Freddy was born when I was little more than a schoolgirl, Mr. Price.” Another of Auntie’s giggles. “Isn’t he a big boy for fourteen?”
“A credit to you, I’m sure.”
“When I was pregnant, his father and I were sure he was going to be a girl. We had our hearts set on the name Frederica. So when he was born, we had to rack our brains for a masculine equivalent.”
Freddy looked from me to the yellow Chinese vases on the mantelpiece. “If I threw something, something very expensive and easily breakable, do you think she would behave like a normal mother and send me to my room?”
“How about a drink?” I asked while walking over to hand Mr. Price his gin and tonic. Ben and Daddy will be here in a minute, and even though it’s a little early in the day, we could probably make it into a real cocktail hour and open a tin of peanuts.”
“Yes, isn’t it wonderful about Morley?” Aunt Lulu enthused. “Home after all these years of traveling the world.”
“His job kept him on the move?” Mr. Price sipped his drink.
“Not really,” I hedged.
“Morley has made a successful career out of not working. Such a credit to him.” Aunt Lu
lu’s voice held sincere admiration. “After all, that’s something most men can’t claim in this day and age. And it’s not as though that trust fund of his can be all that big. At least that’s what Maurice says. He’s always believed that Morley must have had other irons in the fire. But I think that’s unkind. Your father is just awfully good at doing nothing, Ellie.”
“Does he plan to make a long visit with you?” Mr. Price asked me as he went to sit down on the sofa facing the window, only to find that Freddy had already accommodated himself full-length and appeared unlikely to budge.
“He hasn’t said,” I replied coolly.
“Uncle Morley is here on a sad errand.” My cousin obviously felt compelled, despite his lethargic appearance, to spill the beans about things that could surely be of no interest to a total stranger. “Harriet Brown, the woman he loved, was killed recently in a car accident.”
“Driving in this country has become a nightmare.” Mr. Price shook his head sadly, and Freddy quickly put him right on one point.
“This accident occurred in Germany. And poor Uncle got stuck with the rotten task of bringing her ashes home to her family.”
“He has my deepest sympathy, living as I do in daily dread of something happening to Mary Martha.” Mr. Price studied his drink as if seeing in its depths the bitterest of eventualities. “Naturally, the subject comes up every now and then about the choices to be made when she does pass away, and she says she would prefer cremation. The dear woman believes it might bring me some small comfort if I were to have her scattered among the rosebushes in the garden. And I think she’s right. I’m sure I don’t know how your father”—the widower-to-be was now looking at me— “your poor father, got through the business of handing over those ashes. Was he able to stay composed in the presence of his lady love’s family?”
The Trouble with Harriet Page 14
